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The Known World
The Known World The Known World is the moniker given to the world of "The Forge". It contains five continents and five separate nations total, and is home to untold numbers of sentient life forms, though contemporary estimates put this number at at least 1 and a half billion. As far as the inhabitants of the world know, their planet is spherical, though there has been no recorded journey around the entirety of the "globe". Each of the five continents is separated by thousands of miles of sea known as the Vleric Ocean. It is generally believed that the Vleric takes up more of the planet than all of the land combined. Primarily, the continents of the Known World are dominated by monarchical or autocratic nations, who rule through military supremacy or aristocracy. The peoples these states rule vary immensely in morphology, culture, faith and history; globalization has had nearly no effect on the Known World for almost two thousand years, magnified by the great distances of the Vleric Ocean and the destructive introductions the various powers often had with one another. Continents As previously stated, the Known World is made up of five continents, suspended in the Vleric Ocean. Circa 4005 P.D. (Crodanian calendar), these landmasses are : Crodana : One of the largest continents worldwide and one of the most important on the world stage. The coastlines along its Grand Glacier are the westernmost points of the Known World itself. The Kingdom of Crodana has ruled the entire continent under a single flag since 2126 P.D. from the volcano-topping capital of Godsreach. The Kingdom is ruled by a King, his several administrative Councils, and by local governors called Castellans who rule in eight of the nine Prefectures. The practice of Magic remains strongest in Crodana to this very day, as other countries have religious biases towards its use or have developed technology that renders it obsolete. Crodana is a diverse continent, both in biome and in demographics. Its environments range from snowy wastes to scorching, endless deserts, ethereal forests and jungles, mountains and badlands. These environments seem to be frozen in their places, and seasons do not come and go like they do in other lands. Where it is winter, it will always be winter, and vice versa. Populating these lands are Sivath, Aeolons, Sakaalans, Syndraol, Dutag, Goray, Humans, and Skek'Li. Below Mount Moddar live a strange, diminutive race called Zingrezis, or Gnomes in the Known Tongue. Little is known about them, save that they owe no fealty to the Crodanian crown and the crown expects none in return. While the Known Tongue is spoken in Crodana as it is the world over, the denizens do have native languages to offer. The indigenous Sakaalan language is by far the oldest in the land, and the scorpion-men are credited with having invented written Crodanian script with their runes. Skek'Li is still heavily spoken amongst their populations, and though they no longer use it, the Goray keep records of their own ancestral speech for history's sake. Nearly all Crodanians are Dironites or worship a some panoply of Dironite Gods. Koscori'' '': Smallest of the five continents, but by far the most technologically advanced of all time. Every inch of the six islands is gripped by the iron fist of the Koscorian Empire, though some would say calling it an empire is a misnomer as it rules over only a shadow of the territories it claims to have once possessed. For some unknown reason, most of the original landmass was swallowed by the sea, the remainder scorched and twisted and wrent by some unseen cataclysm. Visitors from other lands have remarked that it seems ecologically, economically, and emotionally impossible for anything to be able to live in Koscori. It is unknown when the Empire came to power and made its peoples subservient to the Eye, its capital, but for as long as history has been recorded, a Premier has ruled with absolute power over all the land. The Eye engulfs the entirety of the central island. The other five do not so much have climates as they do remnants of the catastrophes which laid them low in antiquity; Shaer to the south is a dusted land of storms and tornadoes; Yournan in the northwest is a crisscross of chasms and gorges shaped by tremendous earthquakes; Torque to the west, smooth and levelled by millennia of tidal wave pressure; Takan in the northeast hemmed in by glaciers hundreds of feet high so tightly that only air travel can bring people and things in or out. The final island, Ziirqoh, due to some unknown and inextinguishable chemical compound of the soil, has been on fire ever since firearms became commonplace in the Empire; one missed shot, and the ground was forever ablaze. Only Oshoruses can live there as their bio-supplement armor, attached to them at birth, is flame-proof. The races native to the Empire are Takans, Zagili, Oshoruses, Odiks, Lichtanfang, Brutunguns, and Wachillans. These races are privy to aircraft, armored vehicles, the most advanced artillery and firearms, computers, artificial intelligence, a crude form of electronic database, and (rumored) rudimentary spacecraft. They believe in only a single God, Zaydam, and regard his many children as a form of ancestor or sibling spirits. War and death are irrelevant to the Koscorians. As such, wars are highly marketed, advertised events waged between islands. Victory is decided based on which side deals the other more casualties in the allotted time. 'Antioche Vulci ': The northernmost continent of the world, ruled entirely by the United Provinces of Men. The Provinces are unique in The Known World for their homogeniety, as the only sentient beings who inhabit Antioche Vulci are Humans. Theirs is a feudal nation; their Emperor rules from their capital in High Roost, but lesser Lords rule over smaller and smaller portions of territory across the land. His power is absolute, though Emperors have historically given the Lords under their rule high degree of autonomy in their own territories. The only ones with the ability to check his authority are the Twelve Falcons, holy men The same Lords have traditionally ruled over the same Lord-Lineages, their name for their ancestral lands, that their families have possessed for thousands of years. Militarily the Humans of the Provinces are at a disadvantage to the rest of the world. They do not use firearms, and they fear and hate Magic. They compensate for this with a massive population in excess of 300 million people, as well as a ferocious amount of martial readiness. Tactics and superior numbers have won the Humans of the Provinces battles they otherwise would have lost for inferior arms. Of the world's nations, the Humans have no equals in their religious zeal. Their single God of the Clouds, or "God" is so deeply ingrained in their culture that they have had no peaceful interaction with any non-Human societies since their faith had spread to the whole continent. They will only trade with the Humans of Crodana. The rest of the denizens of the world they see as the bastard offspring of men who, in ancient times, had perverse relations with demons and animals, thus producing the somewhat-Human races seem today. The God of the Clouds is a stern, cold figure, always in the back of their minds, and the Humans' culture reflects this. Families are structured around rigid tenets that stress renunciation of the individual, loyalty to one's family name, and obedience to elders. Seasons and climate are normal in Antioche Vulci. Temperatures increase and signs of life increase as one goes further south, and vice versa. Phokos The Primal Isles History Depending on which sources are consulted, and the creeds of those who author such sources, the Known World's beginning are almost universally contested. Dironites, polytheists from the Kingdom of Crodana, will insist that it was their fire God Diron who literally forged the plates of the earth itself in his forge. crafting every coastline and hill to his express wishes before seeding them with life. Humans from the United Provinces of Men, in the continent Antioche Vulci, will stake their swords on the idea that their God of the Clouds is so powerful that He simply willed creation into being. However the world was formed, history was only recorded after many different races had settled the lands they inhabit to this day and begun their many squabbles.